We explain who Benito Mussolini was and his role in fascism. Also, his rise to power in Italy, his alliance with Adolf Hitler and his execution.
Benito Mussolini established a totalitarian dictatorship in Italy and called himself “the Duce.”
Who was Benito Mussolini?
Benito Mussolini was an Italian political leader and dictator who founded the National Fascist Party and ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. He was called “el Duce” (the leader) and he was the architect of a totalitarian regime that abolished civil and political libertiespersecuted the opposition, dissolved unions, established a model of a corporate state and developed a cult of personality for the leader.
Before creating the fascist movement, Mussolini had been a leading figure of Italian socialism.. His favorable position on Italy’s entry into the First World War (1914-1918) forced his expulsion from the Italian Socialist Party. His experience on the war front and the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia encouraged his nationalism and anti-communist stance.
The economic crisis after the war and the fear of the spread of communism allowed Mussolini’s ideas to gain followers among the unemployed and war veterans as well as among industrial, landed and middle class sectors.
Italian fascism and the charismatic figure of Mussolini influenced other leaders right-wing extremists of the period, like Adolf Hitler in Germany. Mussolini formed an alliance with Hitler (the Rome-Berlin Axis) that led to Italy’s participation in World War II, but Italian military defeats led to his dismissal in 1943.
Since September 1943 led the Italian Social Republica regime established in northern Italy with the support of the German armed forces. In 1945, faced with the imminent Allied victory, Mussolini attempted to flee but was intercepted by anti-fascist partisans. He was shot on 28 April 1945.
The personal life of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini born July 29, 1883 in the small Italian town of Predappio, in the present-day region of Emilia-Romagna. He was the first child of the marriage between Alessandro Mussolini, a socialist blacksmith, and Rosa Maltoni, a Catholic teacher. His younger brothers were Arnaldo and Edvige.
He studied at a boarding school run by Salesian priests in Faenza until He was expelled after displaying violent behaviorHe then studied at a school in Forlimpopoli and, in 1901, emigrated to Switzerland.
He read works by thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Piotr Kropotkin and Georges Sorel and began to work as a journalist and speaker. For being involved in the socialist movement and for his defense of violencewas imprisoned several times.
In 1904 he returned to Italy, served in the army and devoted himself to teaching. In 1909 he moved to Trento, where he worked as a journalist for a socialist newspaper, and in 1910 he moved to Forli with Rachele Guidi, whom he married in 1915. They had five children: Edda, Anna Maria, Vittorio, Bruno and Romano. Throughout his life, Mussolini also had several mistresses, including Margherita Sarfatti and Clara Petacci.
Mussolini’s beginnings in political activity
During his youth, Mussolini was part of the socialist movementHe participated in political newspapers and trade union activities and was imprisoned several times. In 1912 he was appointed editor of the newspaper Avanti!official organ of the Italian Socialist Party.
When the First World War began in 1914, Mussolini agreed with the anti-militarist ideas that predominated in the party, but soon He spoke out in favor of Italian intervention in the war.which is why he had to leave the newspaper and was expelled from the Italian Socialist Party.
In November 1914, he obtained funding from the French government and Italian industrialists to publish his own newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italiawhich advocated militarism and nationalism. When Italy entered the war in 1915, Mussolini served at the front until he was wounded in 1917.
When the war ended, Mussolini combined the defense of nationalist ideas with an anti-socialist stancesince he considered that the expansion of communism, which had triumphed in Russia, was a threat to Italy.
The economic crisis of the immediate post-war period favored a group of people to identify with the ideas of Mussolini, who also accused the liberal politicians of Italy’s “mutilated victory” in the war, since, despite belonging to the winning side, Italy did not see all its territorial claims recognized. This is how they were born in 1919 the Italian fighting fascistsa political group that used violence against worker and socialist demonstrations and which, in 1921, became the National Fascist Party.
The March on Rome and Mussolini’s dictatorship
Mussolini organized the March on Rome that allowed him to come to power in Italy in 1922.
The Italian fasci di combattimentoled by Mussolini, gradually gained power in large areas of Italy. In 1921 Mussolini was elected deputy, thanks to the support of landowners and industrial sectors who feared the advance of communism, and in October 1922 an event occurred that led to Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy: the March on Rome.
The March on Rome was led by the “blackshirts”, a paramilitary group of the National Fascist Party that was made up of war veterans, the unemployed and other sectors influenced by Mussolini’s charismatic leadership. The “black shirts” marched towards Rome to demand that the king, Victor Emmanuel III, allow the formation of a fascist government led by Mussolini.
The King of Italy gave in to fascist pressure and appointed Mussolini President of the Council of MinistersThe fascist leader settled in Rome and formed a new cabinet. He concentrated more and more power, obtaining full powers from Parliament and modifying the electoral law to obtain a majority in the parliamentary elections of 1924.
Within a few years, and especially after the assassination of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteoti by fascist groups in 1924, Mussolini (nicknamed “il Duce”, that is, the leader) established a one-party fascist dictatorship.
Mussolini’s foreign policy
In 1935, Mussolini began an expansionist policy that brought him closer to Adolf Hitler.
Mussolini’s foreign policy in the first years of the fascist regime did not have a clear direction, as demonstrated by the signing of the Locarno Treaties (in which Italy was guarantor of the agreements between Germany, France and Belgium) and his participation in the Front of Stresa (an agreement between Italy, France and the United Kingdom to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaties of Locarno against Adolf Hitler’s rearmament policy in Germany).
However, with the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935, Mussolini opted for an expansionist policy that led him to an alliance with Hitler.. This alliance was consolidated with the joint intervention in the Spanish civil war (1936-1939), in support of the rebellious or “national” side, and with the formation of the Rome-Berlin Axis in 1936, the accession of Italy to the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1937. and the signing of the Pact of Steel between Germany and Italy in May 1939.
After invading Albania in April 1939, Mussolini’s Italy entered World War II in June 1940, when France was on the verge of surrender. However, the military defeats of Italian troops in Africa and Europe, and in particular the successful Allied landing in Sicily in July 1943, led to a resurgence of the Allies’ defeat in Sicily. the dismissal of Mussolini from the government of Italy on July 25, 1943 and his replacement by Marshal Pietro Badoglio.
The Italian Social Republic and the death of Mussolini
After being deposed and arrested in 1943, Mussolini was rescued by a German commando.
Mussolini was deposed and taken prisoner, but in September 1943 He was liberated by a German commando. Since then, He established the Italian Social Republic in northern Italy, with its capital in Salò. This dictatorship only survived thanks to German support, whose troops occupied a large part of the territory.
Faced with the imminent defeat of the Axis, Mussolini tried to flee Italy along with his lover, Clara Petacci, and a group of loyal fascists. He was captured by a group of anti-fascist guerrillas in Dongo, near the Swiss border, on April 27, 1945.
He was taken to the village of Giulino di Mezzegra and died by shooting on April 28, 1945. The bodies of Mussolini, Petacci and the other fascist leaders who had tried to flee were taken to Milan and hung upside down in Piazza Loreto to be contemplated and outraged by the population.
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References
- Foot, J. & Hibbert, C. (2023). Benito Mussolini. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
- Gentile, E. (2005). The Italian road to totalitarianism. Party and state in the fascist regime. XXI century.
- Sasson, D. (2008). Mussolini and the rise of fascism. Criticism.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2018). Benito Mussolini. Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/